MECHANICVILLE -- Mary Russo is alive today because of the actions of volunteer firefighters, police and emergency personnel. She will thank them in person at a ceremony scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, at the Mechanicville Central Fire Station.

Russo, 82, was visiting her nephew, Jeremy Mends, on Oct. 23 when a fire broke out in his apartment building. Russo lived with her sister in Essex County, but visited Mends regularly. The two are close, and Russo often cleaned the second-floor apartment while Mends, 35, was at work. He asked her not to go out while he was away from the apartment so he wouldn't have to worry about her taking a fall and having no one to help her.

Despite her age, Russo seemed more like a woman in her 60s, said her sister, Carol Mends, who is Jeremy Mends' mother.

The night of the fire, Mends was working as a waiter at Lakeridge Restaurant in Round Lake. Russo was alone in the apartment when she saw smoke seeping under the door from the stairwell. Thick smoke filled the apartment.

"I was hollering for someone to help me," Russo said. "Someone yelled back to come to the stairs, but I couldn't see the stairs."

It was the last thing she remembers before she passed out.

Mends was serving his last table at about 9 p.m. when he saw fire trucks speed by, going fast enough he said aloud to his customers, 'they must be going somewhere important.'

The first firefighters at the scene on South Third Avenue were turned back by fire and smoke,. Mechanicville Police Officer Tom Sawyer borrowed a neighbor's ladder and, using a flashlight, he looked in and saw Russo on the floor. Firefighters Matt Dunn, Phil Gaudette and Tony Bonventre went in the apartment wearing breathing apparatus and carried the unconscious Russo part of the way down the stairs where they were met by Chief John Dunn, former assistant chief Marty Garland, Sawyer and a second cop, Vince Lavazzo, to complete the rescue.

At the restaurant, Mends took a call from a neighbor. "You have to get home right away," the man said, "Your house is on fire."

Coworkers drove him home. When he arrived, Russo was in the back of a John Ahearn Rescue Squad ambulance, where medics were trying to stabilize her. She was breathing, but gravely injured. On the way to Albany Medical Center Hospital, they met with Clifton Park EMTs, who treated Russo with a cyanide antidote kit, a key to saving her life. But when she reached Albany Med, Mends was told his aunt would have to go to a different hospital. She needed a hyperbaric chamber, which Albany Med doesn't have. Mends chose Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. Russo spent 10 days there, four of them on a ventilator in intensive care. Mends stayed by her side the whole time.

Russo said she's slowly recovering.

Mends said he never gave much thought to firefighters before. Now, "all the words I have to thank them are not enough," he said.